Booze And Mischief

Prohibition Documentary Opts For Insights Instead Of Cliches

October 10, 1989|By Rick Kogan, TV/radio critic.

No one who has ever bent their elbow one too many times needs to be told that there are devils lurking near the bottom of every bottle of booze. But so prominent a thread is liquor in the fabric of America that we often forget the mischief booze can make.

Undeniably its most mischievous time occurred between 1920 and 1933, a period in which it was against the law to manufacture or to drink hard liquor, beer or wine in the U.S. That was the law, otherwise known as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, or Prohibition. But it was far from the reality.

The fascinating and raucous days of Prohibition are the subject of the second in a spectacular series called ``The American Experience.`` And ``Demon Rum`` (9 p.m., Tuesday, WTTW-Ch. 11) is a great hour of television.

There is no mistaking that the documentary holds up a gray-haired mirror to our drug-laced present. The similarities are obvious: the bootleggers employing all manner of methods-from false car seats to speed boats-to smuggle booze across our borders; the corruption and inefficiency of law enforcement; intrusions into our grammar schools; and the bloody territorial gang wars.

This documentary does not hammer the similarities. Rather, the mission of ``Demon Rum`` is to look at a larger picture.

It does this arrestingly and, thanks to the variety of interesting people who share the most telling memories, with great charm.

Wisely, ``Demon Rum`` focuses not on such familiar territory as ganglords, such as Capone, or Bible thumpers, like Lucy Gaston, but on the city of Detroit.

If there was any place where the promises and problems of Prohibition reared their heads, it was in the Motor City. It was there that one could clearly observe not only many of the reasons why Prohibition came to be but all of the subsequent reasons why it never should have been.

As the auto industry took flight, Detroit filled with work-seeking immigrants, most of them with a strong thirst for drink. Bars dotted every block, and alcoholism was rampant. Automaker Henry Ford took it upon himself to change all this, starting a ``Sociological Department,`` the members of which kept tabs on workers and rewarded-sometimes to a double salary tune-those they found to be sober and clean-living.

Mostly as a result of Ford`s machinations, Detroit was the first major city to ``go dry.`` The nation soon followed suit. Then things went wacky.

You can take liquor off the shelves, but that doesn`t kill one`s taste for the stuff. In no time some 50,000 men, women and children were engaged in smuggling or selling liquor in the Detroit area. Blind pigs and speakeasies flourished. Women, for the first time, began frequenting drinking

establishments. Children sold booze to their pals.

The promise of Prohibition quickly turned nightmarish. Organized crime moved in, and things got bloody. The Great Depression fueled the call for repeal and in 1933, the experiment ended.

In the most lively way imaginable, peppered with delightful personal reminiscences, ``Demon Rum`` ignores cliches in favor of the story of a changing America, of our innocence lost. Watching it is a profoundly enlightening and entertaining experience.

There are many who consider C. Everett Koop, the man with the strange beard and the anti-smoking rap, little more than a publicity hound, someone who used the office of surgeon general as a platform for his ego.

But as the latest edition of ``Nova`` (8 p.m., Tuesday, WTTW-Ch. 11)

shows, his considerable publicity came not as a result of egotism but rather of compassion and passion to save human lives. As he emerges in this hourlong documentary, Koop is shown to be a remarkable fellow.

Selected in large part because of his strident anti-abortion views, he became the aggressive point man in battles against smoking, AIDS and alcohol. He outraged former allies with his report that the effects of abortions on women were not as dire as some would like to believe.

For eight years, he walked a tightrope between his private values and his public and political responsibilities. Such a walk brings controversy and Koop was surrounded by it. Still, now out of office, he is determined to remain

``the health conscience of America.``

He will have his chance: NBC has signed Koop for a series of one-hour specials on health in America. It`s scheduled to begin in May.